Toronto video goes viral

It's hard to get away from technology nowadays as a 62 year old Toronto women found out when she somehow parked on top of another car in a Toronto gym parking lot and then drove away. The whole thing was caught on surveillance camera and soon went viral and dubbed the Worst Parking Job Ever by Mashable. Here is the video:

The 62 year old women was arrested and Todd Jamison was presented with a brand new car by a representative from Hyundai Canada. Hyundai took the opportunity to use the video to their advantage as a way to show consumers that 'at Hyundai, we like a story with a happy ending'. One of the marketing advantages to the new era of user created content is that if the company is smart, they will jump on something like this and turn it into a positive brand experience such as Hyundai did. They even took it to the next level and instead of putting out a press release, they created a video to capture the moment and ensure the caring message from Hyundai was well received with the viral video itself. This is what people are talking about when they tell companies to be listening. Hyundai saw an opportunity in the viral video and acted on it. Hyundai didn't have to do anything at all but they did and the video they produced has had 92,522 hits and counting. That's great publicity for them and puts them in a good spot with consumers.

A few things about this intrigued me. Videos like these catch on like wild fire, such as the one about the baby surviving getting hit by a train a few weeks ago. That incredible video saw millions of hits in a matter of days. People love stories like this. Real content from real people and brands and companies have been catching on. We see a lot more marketing veering towards compassion, engagement and customer experience. The shift is happening because people now have control of what they want to see and hear about and companies have to adhere to what they want or get ignored. You can become the hero like Hyundai did, or the bad guy. People like it when a company goes out of its way to make a consumer happy so I'm sure they will be getting a lot of positive feedback from the situation.

Charlotte Barker

Charlotte Barker is a recent graduate of the advertising program at Loyalist College. Her education in advertising lead her to the exploration of social media marketing. Charlotte has worked as Social Media Coordinator and freelance Social Media Strategist for local advertising agencies.
Charlotte is very active personally and professionally online; writing for her own personal blog, guest...
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